Australian Farmers' average age is around 50 .

They have not the education or cultural background that makes it easy for them to be conservationists .

Many are short of money and need "help" from the Government with a combination of the stick and the carrot, if the Governments are serious about preserving the biodiversity that's left .

The recent greenhouse credits that have given cash to a Queensland Farmer for conservative farm management is a good start .

Ron Greentree ,probably the biggest wheatgrower in Australia was chastised for an obvious lack of compassion for the RAMSAR registered wetland that he coveted . His bad example for other farmers is something Don Burke would no doubt prefer not to talk about .

All of what you say is fine Perseus. Of course any new state would take all of the basic structure of the old state that it has separated from with it. Afterall, we are talking about new states, not new countries.

You are probably right in that the cost of setting up new states would be pretty minimal.

The ratio of federal spending and parliamentary representation would presumably be no different either.

But all of this just takes a new state to the same position as the old state, with nothing gained.

Nothing in your last post suggests any sort of gain.

I can’t get my head around your “major advantage for regional states”, as expressed in your previous post:

Why should population increases and hence an automatically continuously increasing economic turnover in our cities translate into a decline in rural areas? It might look that way in terms of expenditure ratios, but I would suggest that that would be a false impression.

A declining ratio of expenditure on rural issues within a paradigm of continuously increasing overall expenditure (from an ever-larger GDP) does not necessarily mean a decline in total expenditure in rural areas, nor a decline in per-capita expenditure.

I would suggest that any decline in population or quality of life in rural areas has much more to do with drought and unsustainable landuse practices that have caught up with us in some places, than it does with any decline in the ratio of national expenditure for the bush....and that there has actually been a big overall increase in expenditure there, due to this ongoing productivity decline.

I can’t see how the erection of new rural states could change the situation in favour of rural communities. Any sort of increase in expenditure that is needed in hard-pressed rural communities can be lobbied for and won through our current system just as easily as it could with a revamped governmental hierarchy.

It comes down to the scale of the issues, the lobbying prowess of the people and their elected representatives and the will of the government of the day.

How I wish posters would "speak to the chair" or the ARTICLE instead of each other. Telephones are for that.
Woody weeds now, I have walked in woody weed country that Burke speaks of, it sure is depressing. Not as depressing of course as desert, which if it were cleared it would become.
No blame on current owners for overgrazing, done along time ago.
What to do? Woody weed I believe is a first growth to recovery but may take a hundred years, even after complete destocking, so is no longer viable farming, grazing land.
If cleared what happens? crops? your kidding with an ephemeral rainfall of even nine inches, there is the SIX feet of evaporation.
Un cleared and left to "grow" solar energy maybe one solution, clear it and replant AND water another. I can only speculate on that?
But best is, hang the guy who illegally cleared in Northern NSW, he hasn't enough money to make compensation for damage he's done.

fluff

Ludwig, you have completely ignored my post on the leaking circular flow of money in regional areas. Productivity growth in regional areas outstrips that of metropolitan areas but still, regions are in economic decline. The leakage of funds from the regions is a direct result of metropolitan overheads. Shift these overheads to a new regional capital and that money will then remain to circulate within the regional economy and reverse the decline.

The evidence is very clear that most metropolitan consumer spending is limited to no more than about 2.5 hours driving distance. In SEQ that means Noosa and Byron. All areas outside that zone get minimal "trickle down" effect. And this means that states will achieve the best distribution and recirculation of government funds when most of the state is within 3 hours drive of the capital.

This also has a "quality of governance" dimension in that SEQ residents can exercise their democratic rights, to protest, or to lobby Ministers or Officials very cheaply, often within their lunch hour. But any citizen that lives more than 3 hours drive from the capital must take a whole day, or more, to exercise the same rights. And that constitutes a structural inequality in the system.

Furthermore, regional communities of interest generally average from 10,000 to 15,000 people while metropolitan communities are closer to the 45,000 that also matches a parliamentary electorate. To base parliamentary electorates on regional community threshholds would be serious overkill in urban locations while the alternative produces oversized electorates in the bush with excessive distances. New states allow each to match their electorates to their own communities.

The existing states also waste a huge amount of money in flying people in and out of the regions on "fact finding" missions and providing briefings etc and this sort of expense will be eliminated with regional autonomy as all the decision makers will be locals who already know the issues.

“How I wish posters would ‘speak to the chair’ or the ARTICLE instead of each other. Telephones are for that.”

Really fluff?

This is the first time I’ve seen this view expressed here. Pertinent discussions between posters is perfectly proper, for as long as they connected to the thread subject or have evolved from it.

No we shouldn’t be speaking to the ‘chair’. Houses of parliament and stodgy old formal meetings are the place for that.

.
Pers, I read your comments on the “leaking circular flow of money” many times. I found it very hard to comment on, so I left it alone.

You are always going to get leakage of that sort, as people will spend some of their money in population centres where the variety of goods and services is greater than they are locally. This will continue to happen with regional setups. People will still be free to cross state borders, and to spend on the internet.

So I can’t see that much would change in that area.

If we know the figures for this sort of financial loss from regional areas, then we should be able to lobby for compensation, via government funding or tax concessions, within the current governmental setup, should we not?

We would still have fly-in, fly-out arrangements with the mines, across state boundaries if Townsville and Mt Isa ended up in separate states, or Perth and the Pilbara. Again, financial loss for some regions could just as easily be dealt with under the current setup as it could with new states. In fact the erection new states would not in itself address this issue, unless it was accompanied by just the same sort of financial adjustments that could be implemented under the current system, or unless restrictions to where people worked or spent their money were implemented, which I’m sure would not be viewed well.

I can’t imagine that flying bureaucrats around on fact-finding missions would be a significant expenditure.

(FYI Perseus http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5822#82731)

Fluff, it is very hard to decipher your ramblings and rantings, but one point I can pick out (I think). You appear to blame the woody weed problem on historical overgrazing. In most cases this is inaccurate. A large number of woody weed problems have stemmed from UNDER-grazing. Particularly since the move in northern areas from sheep to cattle, which dont exert as much grazing pressure on these weeds. The move from sheep to cattle has in a number of areas come about because the land has shown that it can produce enough vegetation for cattle (sheep need less), and the summer rainfall patterns being detrimental to blowfly control. This is why in western areas of NSW you will find more sheep than cattle, because they need less fodder (will eat it closer to the ground) AND rainfall patterns tend to be winter-based.